Reference: The ASHA Leader (Oct. 11, 2011)

The distinctive roar of a motorcycle engine is loud, but studies have revealed the biggest source of noise for motorcyclists is generated by air whooshing over their helmets.  Even at legal speeds, the sound can exceed safe levels.  Researchers in the United Kingdom placed motorcycle helmets on mannequin heads, mounted them in a wind tunnel, and turned on fans.  By placing microphones at different locations around the helmet and at  the mannequin's ear, researchers found that an area underneath the helmet and near the chin bar is a significant source of the noise that reaches rider's sensitive eardrums.  Future tests will move beyond the wind tunnel to riders on the open road.  The findings, described in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, may lead to quieter helmet design.  Search "hard on hearing" at www.aip.org/aip.

Folic Acid Associated with Reduced Risk    

Reference: Advance for Speech-Language Pathologists Audiologists (Nov. 4, 2011)

The use of folic acid supplements by women during the periconceptional period has been found to be associated with a reduced risk of children having severe language delay at age 3, according to a Norwegian study.

Randomized controlled trials and other studies have demonstrated that folic acid supplements taken during the period from four weeks before conception to eight weeks afterward reduce the risk of neural tube defects.  "To our knowledge none of the trials have followed up their sample to investigate whether these supplements have effects on neurodevelopment that are only manifest after birth," the researchers reported.

The new study was conducted by Christine  Roth, ClinPsyD, MSc, of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, in Oslo, and colleagues.  They  investigated whether maternal use of folic acid supplements was associated with a reduced risk of severe language delay among offspring at age 3.

"Unlike the United States, Norway does not forify foods with folic acid, increasing the contrast in relative folate status between women who do and do not take folic acid supplements," the researchers noted.

Pregnant women in Norway were recruited for the study beginning in 1999.  Data were included on children born before 2008 whose mothers returned the three-year follow-up questionnaire by June 16, 2010.  Maternal use of folic acid supplements within the interval between four weeks before and eight weeks after conception was the exposure.

The primary outcome measured for the study was children's language competency at age 3 as gauged by maternal report on a six-point ordinal language grammar scale.  Children with minimal expressive language (only one-word or unintelligible utterances) were rated as having severe language delay.

The main analysis for the study involved 38,954 children: 19,956 boys and 18,998 girls.  A total of 204 (0.5 percent) of the children (159 boys and 45 girls) were rated as having severe language delay.  Children whose mothers took no dietary supplements in the specified exposure interval comprised the control group.  there were 9,052 children in this group, including 81 (0.9 percent) with severe language delay.

The researchers reported the data for three patterns of exposure to maternal dietary supplements: 1) other supplements, but no folic acid 2) folic acid only; and 3) folic acid in combination with other supplements.

The first group numbered 2,480 children, including 22 (0.9 percent), with severe language delay.  The second group, of folic acid only, had 7,127 children, 28 (0.4 percent) of whom had severe language delay.  The last group was comprised of 19,005 children, including 73 (0.4 percent) with severe language delay.

Maternal use of supplements containing folic acid within the periconceptional period was associated with a substantially reduced risk of severe language delay in children at age 3, the researchers discovered.

"We found no association, however, between maternal use of folic acid supplements and significant delay in gross motor skills at age 3," they reported.  "The specificity provides some reassurance that there is no confounding by an unmeasured factor.  Such a factor might be expected to relate to both language and motor delay."

No previous prospective observational study examined the relation of prenatal folic acid supplements to severe language delay in children.

"If this relationship were shown to be causal in future research, it would have important implications for understanding the biological processes underlying disrupted neurodevelopment, for the prevention of neurodevelopmental disorders, and for policies of folic acid supplementation for women of reproductive age," the investigators said.

Reference: Roth, C., Magnus, P., Schjolberg, S. et al. (2011). Folic acid supplements in pregnancy and severe language delay in children. JAMA, 306 (14): 1566-73
      

Reference: Advance for Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists (Oct. 3, 2011)

Mild Hearing Loss
Linked to brain atrophy in older adults

Declines in hearing ability may accelerate gray matter atrophy in auditory areas of the brain and increase the listening effort necessary for older adults to comprehend speech successfully, a new study has shown.  When a sense is altered, the brain reorganizes and adjusts.  In the case of people with poor hearing, researchers found that the gray matter density of the auditory areas was lower in people with decreased hearing ability, suggesting a link between hearing ability and brain volume.

"As hearing ability declines with age, interventions such as hearing aids should be considered not only to improve hearing but to preserve the  brain," said lead author Jonathan Peelle, PhD, a research associate in the Department of Neurology, Perelman School of Medicine, at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.  "People hear differently, and those with even moderate hearing l0ss may have to work harder to understand complex sentences."

In a pair of studies, researchers measured the relationship of hearing acuity to the brain, first measuring the response of the brain to increasingly complex sentences and then measuring cortical brain volume in the auditory cortex.

Older adults, ages 60-77, with normal hearing for their age were evaluated to determine whether normal variations in hearing ability impacted the structure or function of the network of brain areas supporting speech comprehension.

The studies found that people with hearing loss showed less brain activity on functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans when listening to complex sentences. People with poorer hearing also had less gray matter in the auditory cortex, suggesting that areas of the brain related to auditory processing may show accelerated atrophy when hearing ability declines.

In general, research suggests that hearing sensitivity has cascading consequences for the neural processes supporting both perception and cognition.  Although the research was conducted in older adults, the findings have implications for younger adults, including those concerned about listening to music at loud volumes.

"Your hearing ability directly affects how the brain processes sounds, including speech," said Dr. Peelle.  "Preserving your hearing doesn't only protect your ears but also helps your brain perform at its best."

Audiologists should monitor hearing in patients as they age, noting that individuals who still fall within normal hearing ability may have increasing complaints of speech comprehension issues.

Grants from the National Institutes of Health funded the research.

Peele, J.E., Troiani, V., Grossman, M., et al. (2011).  Hering loss in older adults affects neural systems supporting speech comprehension.  The Journal of Neuroscience, 31 (35): 12638-43

 

Reference: The ASHA Leader (October 11, 2011)

A diet rich in omega-3s could reduce the severity of brain damage after a stroke.  Researchers from Universite Laval in Quebec, Canada, observed that mice that had been fed a diet rich in DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid, for three months had 25% less brain damage following stroke than mice that had eaten a control diet.  The full study was published in Stroke (doi:10.1161/STROKEAHA.111.620856).

Reference: The ASHA Leader (October 11, 1011) from the American Speech and Hearing Association

New research has identified more genes associated with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and found an overlap between some of these genes and those found in other conditions such as autism spectrum disorders (ASDs).  Researchers studied the DNA of 248 unrelated patients with ADHD; 19 of 248 patients had inherited changes.  Within this group of inherited changes, researchers also found genes previously identified in conditions such as ASD; conversely they found ADHD genes in nine of the patients previously diagnosed with ASD.  The study appears in Science Translational Medicine(http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/3/95/95ra75).

Reference: http://sos-research-blog.com

This article was posted and seemed so relevant to our very serious approach to special needs that we forget as professionals that laughter is a great way to learning.  Here is the post.

Many children with special needs have problems with friendships.  The problems can surround not understanding nonverbal communication, to not being able to identify emotions, to confusion over humor and more.  One thing we know for sure is that life without friendships and human connections is a very lonely life.

Humor is something that can bring two people together.  Laughter signifies that people are having fun and is good for a healthy relationship.  Sharing jokes and funny stories provides a connection between two people.

Children love to laugh.  But children with special needs such as autism, ADHD, Sensory Processing Disorder, and more often take things quite literally.  This results in them missing a joke or the humor in a situation.  If a child can't share laughter with a group, then she is missing a part of the bonding that occurs and this affects the development of friendships.

Before you can work on humor with your child, you need to understand humor from a developmental perspective.  This is a general guideline and actual ages vary depending on the child.
    
    1) By six months of age, babies will laugh at behaviors that are not typical of their parents.  
         Making exaggerated faces will get a baby to laugh.
    2) A one year old baby loves the game of peek-a-boo.

At this stage, you can play peek-a-boo and other games that do not end at a predictable time, such as jack-in-the-box.  This can be played with a four or five year old child with special needs (or even older) if she has not acquired this basic level of humor.  There are many different kinds of jack-in-the-boxes, such as Sock Monkey Jack in the Box and SpongeBob Squarepants Jack-in-the-box, so you should be able to find one that will appeal to your child.

      3) Starting at age one or one and a half, children start pretend play and  will make believe that
            an object is something other than what it is or will use it in a "wrong" way.  For example,
            a child may put a sock on his hand and laugh.
       4) By age two to three as language skills develop, children enjoy giving objects the wrong 
            name.  "Bathroom" humor may also begin at this time.

For the two stages above, you can create a game to play with your child.  Take a box and fill it with familiar objects.  Pull something out and pretend it is something else.  For example, you can take a sock out of the box and say it is a hat and put it on your head.  After you take a few turns, let your child try.

        5) By age three, children enjoy playing with the sounds of words.  They may create 
             variations of common words or generate rhyming words.  Some of these children may     
              also enjoy making nonsensical sentences.

Saxton Freymann and Joost Eiffers created a set of books containing photographs of fruits and vegetables depicting emotions, vehicles, and other objects.  The pictures can help children with special needs to not only identify moods and emotions, but to also appreciate the silliness of the photographs.  The books are titled "How Are You Peeling? (Scholastic Bookshelf), "Fast Food", and "Food Play".

         6) Around age five, children start telling riddles or knock-knock jokes that don't make any
               sense.

"What Do You Hear When Cows Sing?: And Other Silly Riddles (I Can Read Book 1) contains
twenty-two riddles with the use of wordplay.

         7) By age six or seven, the nonsensical part of the riddles and knock-knock jokes disappear
               and children find true riddles and knock-knock jokes very humorous.

"Good Clean Knock-Knock Jokes for Kids" contains a couple hundred jokes.

Knowing the developmental stages of humor is important.  When attempting to teach humor to a child with special needs, you need to make sure that you are teaching what is developmentally appropriate and not what is appropriate based on the child's chronological age.  In addition to helping to develop your child's humor, other benefits will be seen, such as improved eye contact and a fun emotional connection between you and your child.

Reference:  St. Louis Post Dispatch August 4, 2011

Disorder has roots in failure to recognize the sounds of speech.
by Pam Belluck New York Times

Many people consider dyslexia simply a reading poblem in which children mix up letters and misconstrue written words.  But scientists increasingly have come to believe that the reading difficulties of dyslexia are part of a larger puzzle: a problem with how the brain processes speech and puts together words from smaller units of sound.

Now, a study published last week in the journal Science suggests that how  dyslexics hear language may be more important than previously realized.  Reasearchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found that people with dyslexia have more trouble recognizing voices than those without dyslexia.

John Gabrieli, a professor of cognitive neuroscience, and Tyler Perrachione, a graduate student, asked people with and without dyslexia to listen to recorded voices paired with cartoon avatars on computer screens.  The subjects tried matching the voices to the correct avatars speaking English and then an unfamiliar language, Mandarin.

Nondyslexics matched voices to avatars correctly almost 70 percent of the time when the language was English and half the time when the language was Mandarin.  Experts not involved in the study said that was a striking disparity.

"Typically, you see big differences in reading, but there are just subtle general differences between individuals who are afflicted with dyslexia and individuals who aren't on a wide variety of tests," said Richard Wagner, a psychology professor at Florida State University.  "This effect was really large."

Sally Shaywitz, a director of the Center for Dyslexia and Creativity at Yale University, said the study "demonstrates the centrality of spoken language in dyslexia-that it's not a problem in meaning, but in getting to the sounds of speech."

That is why dyslexic children often misspeak, she said, citing two examples drawn from real life.

"A child at Fenway Park watching the Red Sox said, 'Oh, I'm thirsty. Can we go to the confession stand?' " she said.  "Another person crossing a busy intersection where many people were walking said, 'Oh, those Presbyterians should be more careful.'  It's not a question of not knowing but being unable to attach what you know is the meaning to the sounds."

Gabrieli said the findings underscored a critical problem for dyslexic chidlren learning to read: the ability of a child hearing, say, a parent or teacher speak to connect the auditory bits that make up words, called phonemes, with the sight of written words.

If a child has trouble grasping the sounds that make up language, he siad, acquiring reading skills will be harder. 

The research shows that spoken language deficiencies persist even when dyslexics learn to read well.  The study subjects were mostly "high-functioning, high-IQ young adults who had overcome their reading difficulty," Gabrieli said.  "And yet when they had to distinguish voices, they were not one iota better with the English-language voices that they've heard all their life."

Experts said the new study also shows the interconnectedness of the brain processes invoiced in reading.  Many scientists had considered voice recognition to be "like recognizing melodies or things that are primarily nonverbal," Gabrieli said.

Voice recognition was thought to be a separate task in the brain from understanding language.

But this research shows that normal reading involves a "circuit, the ability to have all of those components integrated absolutely automatically," said Maryanne Wolf, a dyslexia expert at Tufts University.  "One of the great weaknesses in dyslexia is that the system is not able to integrate these phoneme-driven systems" with other aspects of language comprehension.

Any questions or comments about this article are welcome at www.interactivetherapy.net!

To start the discussion:

A speech language pathologist is often involved with a child's articulation and/or phonological disorder at earlier ages before a child starts to read.  One cannot predict if a child with an articulation or phonological disorder will have a reading/writing problem.  It behooves us as educators and speech language pathologists to monitor a child's development in reading and writing for those children who may be at risk for dyslexia because of difficulty in perceiving, processing and producing sounds in speech.  If anyone is doing research on predicting dyslexia based on articulation/phonological disorders, please let me know.  It would be a worthwhile study.  It would be good to know if  those of us working in the field of speech language pathology could lessen the degree of dyslexia before a child learns to read/write or even prevent it. 
Pam Hass, Interactive Therapy Inc